Amazon's New Fire Phone Lets You Scan Something Then Immediately Buy It

Amazon’s new Fire Phone comes with a new feature, called Firefly, that lets you scan physical items, then immediately buy them via Amazon — exactly the kind of feature you’d expect on a phone made by an e-commerce behemoth.

Firefly can already recognize up to 100 million different objects, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a demonstration Wednesday.

With a press of a button, Fire users can scan not only physical objects, but also songs, movies and television episodes through their sounds, according to a press release. Firefly can also detect printed text, including URLs and phone numbers, saving users the time spent on dialing digits or typing web addresses — so long, VR codes.

Amazon has made Firefly’s software development kit (SDK) available to developers to encourage further innovations with the scanning technology. MyFitnessPal, a smartphone app that tracks diet and exercise, is planning to provide nutritional data for objects that Firefly detects, The Verge reports.